La collina di Montmartre con cava di pietra

When Van Gogh painted this, he had only just arrived in Paris, in the spring of 1886, and had not yet met the colour that would transform him. Montmartre was still half countryside then, a hill of windmills and working stone quarries on its northern slope, the side away from the new apartment blocks. He set up on that quiet side, among the piles of timber and cut stone off the Rue Caulaincourt. The palette is still the earthy brown and grey he had brought from Holland, the sky heavy. Within a year the Impressionists, and his brother Theo's shop full of their canvases, would lift those colours into something far brighter. This hillside caught him at the very start, still painting like the Dutchman he had been.